Weeks 15 & 16 - Holiday Festivities

We made it! Winter Break is finally here! Rejoice! 

Let's rewind the week...
Our 7th graders worked on gingerbread house themed activities in preparation for building actual gingerbread houses today. We spent a lot of time using drill and repetition with equations and inequalities. We also incorporated a lot of movement and hands-on activities to reinforce the solving process. Our favorite activity (aside from actually building the houses) involved the kiddos rotating through stations where they solved a problem and were given a part of the gingerbread house to decorate and attach to the house. 






Then we surprised them today with building real gingerbread houses. Take a look at the creativity!!






We've talked a lot about the ease in which we can do stations in our new active learning center. The tables, the chairs, and the verb boards have become vital teaching tools... after having this classroom for only 3 months, we already can't remember how we ever taught without them. Steelcase's grant is currently open. We strongly encourage you to apply. Never, ever did we think we would win and here we are! It has transformed our teaching and the student's learning and engagement. Click the link and apply, you've got nothing to lose! 

Week 14 - We Are Official...

It finally feels official! Our Active Learning Center sign was posted outside of our classroom and it looks awesome! Can you imagine being so excited about a sign? WE ARE!! 

I don't think our students even noticed... nor did they notice the day the maintenance men came to install it. Our kiddos are so used to us hosting visitors in the classroom that they aren't even bothered with the drilling and all that took place to install the sign. It's a good thing 😊

This week the 7th graders continued working on 2 step equations. We decided to take it back to the old school days and play some bingo. I think we both forgot how much kids love bingo! Overall, they are doing a great job with equations. 

The 8th graders are knee deep into our functions unit. We've done 2 rounds of mini-stations with them so far (3 stations per 1-hour class).  We both agreed that this unit was a little easier last year since we looped with our students. But we are making our way through it. 

We want to take a moment to discuss our seating. After having the classroom for a few months now and seeing the impact that flexible seating has on students, we really want to change things up a bit for the second semester. We are currently in the process of trying to get the couch and the campfire seating section front and center. It is proving to be a bit of a challenge to make sure everyone can see the board at all times (even though the board is not used daily for instruction, it is still used for the morning message, to do list, etc.). Luckily everything is easy to move. We will hopefully be able to share some pictures of our newest set up after winter break. 

Weeks 12 & 13

Long time, no see! Week 12 was a short week for us due to fall break. We hope everyone had a nice, relaxing Thanksgiving with family and friends!

On to Week 13... Oh my goodness! This week has been so hectic. Not only did we have to plan and prep for stations for our kiddos, record videos for our blended lessons but we also hosted a visiting county in our classroom on Wednesday AND prepped and led three different sets of PD trainings for our staff on Thursday and Friday. Whew!! But, it was all SOOOOOOO worth it. The PD trainings went so well. Melissa and I lead three one-hour sessions on active learning strategies and we made sure to make the content relevant to our audience.  We trained the science, English and history departments (we trained the Math department a few weeks ago). Making three content specific trainings was a lot of work but we got it done and it totally paid off. Teachers were engaged and excited! We left the trainings feeling positive and hopeful that teachers would step out of their comfort zones and implement some of the strategies we shared. 

Next week we will the blog will return to student focused activities. Hopefully (fingers crossed) we will have a surprise to share with you towards the end of December!